Students

Meet Our Doctoral Students

Emily Bailey

Ph.D. Student, Anthropology and Education

Emily Bailey is a doctoral candidate studying autism, employment, and futurity in France. In particular, her dissertation project focuses on the intersection of State-led efforts to produce an idealized, normative future and the lived experiences of autistic adolescents and their educators at an employment training program. Through ethnographic fieldwork, Emily seeks to examine how autistic adolescents and their caregivers contend with the future that’s been imagined for them and, when necessary, imagine something different.

As the sibling of an autistic person, the motivations behind her research interests are deeply personal. As a researcher, Emily strives to center autistic voices in her work and affirm neurodivergent experiences of the world through an anthropological lens.

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International & Transcultural Studies

Anna Burns (She/Her/Hers)

Ph.D. Student, Anthropology and Education

Anna is a second year doctoral student in Anthropology and Education. She is an enrolled member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, and she works within her community to understand the effects that settler colonialism have had on sovereignty and self-identity for Choctaw tribal members. Previously, at the University of Oxford, Anna studied Bilingual and Intercultural Education (EIB) in Ecuador. Her undergraduate work at Dartmouth College similarly focused on Peruvian EIB and its implementation in Urban and Peri-Urban schools in Cusco. Largely, Anna is interested in understanding the ways in which how we learn, what we learn, and the context of that learning have direct implications on Indigenous identity, tribal sovereignty, and Indigenous self-determination.

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International & Transcultural Studies

Samantha Clarke (She/Her/Hers)

Ph.D. Student, Anthropology and Education

Samantha Clarke is a Ph.D. student in Anthropology and Education, focusing on culturally affirming education in Haiti. Her research examines the gaps in the education system in rural Haiti, to develop a framework that integrates meaningful and purposeful pedagogy rooted in cultural relevance. Centering on Haitian knowledge, history, and language, she seeks to create a stronger educational model for rural students.
Samantha has taught French at the high school and university levels, including the University of Pennsylvania, Temple University, and Villanova University. As an Adjunct Lecturer at Penn, she teaches Haitian Creole, fostering linguistic proficiency and cultural literacy while exploring global and historical contexts.
With a background in legal studies and military service, she bridges the fields of anthropology, education, and policy to reimagine inclusive and equitable learning frameworks, and aims to promote educational reform that is locally rooted yet globally connected.

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International & Transcultural Studies Student-Parent Veteran

Sasha Dobos-Czarnocha

Ph.D. Student, Anthropology and Education

As doctoral student in the Anthropology and Education Program, my research explores meaning and the dancing body. I am concerned with the ways that embodied processes and site are impacted by the political economies or power dynamics within eras of colonialization, globalization, and virtual education. My dissertation ethnographically explores pedagogies and meaning associated with Afro Cuban Folkloric dance as it moves between religious ritual in 1960’s Cuba to public dance studios in current New York City. In order to get a sense of the impact that on-line learning has on educative practices that center the body and place, my research scope will eventually expand to the globalized market of virtual dance education platforms. After fifteen years teaching with the New York City Department of Education, my academic work is grounded by the ways ethnographic methods can support teachers and artists to identify, explore, and counter oppression via embodied and creative perspectives.

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International & Transcultural Studies Student-Parent

Madeleine Hassankhani

Ph.D. Student, Anthropology and Education

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International & Transcultural Studies First-Generation College Student Student-Parent

Skylar Hou

Ph.D. Student, Anthropology and Education

Skylar's research focuses on the aspirations and consequences of efforts made by language learners as they create new domains of knowledge and innovative ways to engage with the language. In their ongoing dissertation project, they examine a group of elderly individuals who organize themselves to learn their heritage language, Classical Mongolian — a language they never had the opportunity to learn in their youth. Through 9 months of ethnographic work, Skylar documents their creative learning strategies, revealing how language serves not just as a tool for communication, but as a vibrant place for memory, community, and joy.

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International & Transcultural Studies

Elena Peeples

Ph.D. Student, Anthropology and Education

Dissertation Advisor: Nicholas Limerick

I am a doctoral candidate in Anthropology and Education. My research interests include adult education, community organizing and collective political action, urbanism and urban infrastructure, and Latin American immigration to the United States. My dissertation work considers community organizing and advocacy efforts around traffic safety issues within participatory planning initiatives. Through ethnographic engagement, this project considers how a variety of stakeholders, especially Latinx immigrants, participate in planning initiatives and community organizing and how the knowledge they produce for and through these efforts is legitimated, transformed, contested, and reinscribed as they attempt to improve traffic safety. Prior to entering doctoral study, I was an educator, organizer, and nonprofit leader working across southern and central New Jersey.

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International & Transcultural Studies Student-Parent

Noël Um-Lo

Ph.D. Student, Applied Anthropology

Dissertation Advisor: Nicholas Limerick

Noël is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of International and Transcultural Studies at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her dissertation research, situated in South Korean alternative schools for North Korean displaced youth, examines the impact of national unification discourse on resettlement schooling contexts. This project is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant in Cultural Anthropology. Noël's appointments as a Teaching Assistant have been in the Department of Anthropology at Columbia University, the Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures Department at Barnard College, the Education Program at Barnard College, and the International and Transcultural Studies department at Teachers College. She is also a Senior Editor for Current Issues in Comparative Education (CICE) Journal and former Academic Chair of the Association for Educational Anthropology (AEA) at Teachers College.

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International & Transcultural Studies Student-Parent

Sarah Vazquez (She/Her/Hers)

Ph.D. Student, Anthropology and Education

Sarah G. Vazquez is a Ph.D. Candidate in Anthropology and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, where her research examines the intersection of childhood, digital technology, civic engagement, and multicultural education. Her dissertation, Civic Media Worlds, is an ethnographic study exploring how multilingual children use digital technologies in their social lives, and in particular how they are engaged with the Roblox ecosystem. Working in partnership with Clifton Public Schools in Passaic County, New Jersey, her research contributions to conversations on education technology, digital equity, civic media literacy and the role of digital technologies in shaping civic identities among young children.

Sarah is also a member of the Primary School Faculty at Montclair Kimberley Academy in Essex County, New Jersey. Prior to her doctoral studies, she taught in elementary education for several years in the US and internationally.

More information: www.sarahgvazquez.me

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International & Transcultural Studies Student-Parent

Erica Yardy

Ph.D. Student, Anthropology and Education

Erica Clarke Yardy is a doctoral student in the Anthropology and Education program. She is also a Research Associate with the NYC Early Childhood Research Network. Her focus is on collaborative research with Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) workers to explore the experience of this work. Her projects include the use of collaborative ethnography, autoethnography, ethnographic conversations, collecting life histories, and content analysis. More recently, Erica has framed this work within a feminist ethnographic lens. She has presented her work at conferences including the American Educational Research Association Conference, the Visions of Racial Justice and Childhood Conference, the Reconceptualizing Early Childhood Education Conference, and the American Anthropological Association Conference. Prior to her research work, she was an early childhood teacher in Barbados, Illinois, and the New York City Metropolitan Area.

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International & Transcultural Studies

We are delighted to announce the launch of our new online profiles for Doctoral Students at Teachers College.

If you are a currently enrolled doctoral student at Teachers College, please visit the profile submission page for more information on how you can create your own profile.

Meet Our Doctoral Students

Anna Burns (She/Her/Hers)

Samantha Clarke (She/Her/Hers)

Sarah Vazquez (She/Her/Hers)

We are delighted to announce the launch of our new online profiles for Doctoral Students at Teachers College.

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